D&D 5E Hex Shenanigans

[jaelis]

A chicken coop in your home base? It's still really gamist, regardless. Why is this warlock so paranoid that he feels the need to constantly maintain hex when he's in his stronghold? Is it built on top of a hellmouth?

A powerful NPC warlock might indeed face constant interruptions from pesky adventurers. And might enjoy keeping chickens.

Unless your games never involve any travel, not every day will be a dungeon delve. In my games, several days of travel can pass without any dangerous encounters.

Agreed, but I don't even see how this would come up on a day when the warlock truly isn't expecting any danger. Maybe he kills a chicken maybe not, what does it matter. Is your concern here that you don't think the warlock should have his hex up if he's relaxing on the beach during what he thought was downtime, and you want to have a dragon turtle suddenly appear? I'll agree with you on that but I don't think it is what the OP was thinking about.

You do have to hold the gun in your hand. It's just an invisible third hand we call concentration. You can only hold one thing in that hand.

Yes but unlike actual hands, the only think you can concentrate on is a spell. Holding an actual gun in my actual hand would clearly be an inconvenience. Maintaining concentration on hex doesn't seem inconvenient to me. And by this reasoning, would you argue against letting a warlock cast hex in the normal way in a battle, and then keeping concentration on it for the next 8 hours?

If you end up casting a different concentration spell before needing hex, you'll drop hex anyway. If someone hits you before you use hex, you may drop hex anyway. It makes perfect sense to do this all the time if you think of the character as a bunch of stats. IMO, it makes no sense if you think of the character as a person.

We both agree that the actual mechanical benefit here is pretty marginal, and this is the main reason I'd say. But you seem to see some kind of in-game burden that makes the idea absurd since the benefit is so small. Is it that you interpret concentrating on a spell as a fairly intense, ongoing effort?

 

[Umbran]

ROFL ok buddy. Your example is so amazingly bad. It's a whole bunch of effort and ridiculous behaviour...

Oh my giddy aunt, is that actually your argument?

Because I have a horrifying revelation for you. You're going to want to sit down for this because this might might kill you! Get the percentile dice out for that System Shock check!

Wizards - get this Wizards - get to use ALL their spell slots for a single encounter in a 5MWD!!!!!!!!

Mod Note:

Dude. This was a while back, but... How much disrespect do you figure you can get away with in one post? Answer: Not this much.

You need to pay more attention to the fact that the person on the other end of the line is a person, and not some non-entity you can heap derision on for your own jollies. If this weren't several days back, you'd be getting booted from the thread for it. Think on that, please, and engage with people better in the future.

 

[Fanaelialae]

A powerful NPC warlock might indeed face constant interruptions from pesky adventurers. And might enjoy keeping chickens.


Agreed, but I don't even see how this would come up on a day when the warlock truly isn't expecting any danger. Maybe he kills a chicken maybe not, what does it matter. Is your concern here that you don't think the warlock should have his hex up if he's relaxing on the beach during what he thought was downtime, and you want to have a dragon turtle suddenly appear? I'll agree with you on that but I don't think it is what the OP was thinking about.


Yes but unlike actual hands, the only think you can concentrate on is a spell. Holding an actual gun in my actual hand would clearly be an inconvenience. Maintaining concentration on hex doesn't seem inconvenient to me. And by this reasoning, would you argue against letting a warlock cast hex in the normal way in a battle, and then keeping concentration on it for the next 8 hours?


We both agree that the actual mechanical benefit here is pretty marginal, and this is the main reason I'd say. But you seem to see some kind of in-game burden that makes the idea absurd since the benefit is so small. Is it that you interpret concentrating on a spell as a fairly intense, ongoing effort?

Nope, it's that I see doing this ritually every day as being absurd.

If you already have hex up, then go ahead and maintain it. Doesn't hurt anything because you already have it up. It's going through the gymnastics of pre casting it using a chicken every morning on the off chance that there's an encounter that I take issue with.

 

[jaelis]

Doing it before venturing into a dangerous ruin? Sure, I think I'd be okay with that.

Doing it every day regardless of circumstances? That's absurd.

I will admit that all my thinking on this has been in the context of doing it before venturing into a dangerous ruin. If your main issue is the idea of a warlock going to this trouble every day, regardless of circumstance, then I understand. But does that mean you're comfortable with a warlock carrying a crate of chickens to the dungeon that he expects to spend a week exploring, and then using the chickens there? I did not get the impression that you would be.

 

[Helldritch]

What bothers the people here is not Hexing a chicken. It is doing it constantly by carrying quite a good number of them into adventuring. This is where logic dictates that something is wrong. I do concur with them.

Once in a while, if you happen to find a chicken, a rat or whatever fine by me. Carrying a whole farm is not.

As far as this shenanigan doubling the warlock's power... nope. Not really. Especially if the DM enforces the 6-8 encounters per day, taking a short rest immediately after a long rest is a losing proposition as an encounter this early would ensure quite a hard to deadly type encounter in my games. This would tax the players' ressources and would be none the wiser as the warlock might lose his concentration during that fight.

In addition. This shenanigan will only benefits Warlocks of mid level and up when their slots are the equivalent of a third level spell. In my campaigns players of this level are starting to get reknown and are known throughout their area. You can bet that if the warlock is using this tactics (or any players is using the same shenanigan) over and over; it will be a known fact for any major foe they might have and they will act and prepare accordingly. A fireball from nowhere centered on the resting warlock will ensure a highly plausible loss of concentration and thus the warlock would start the day with one spell less from his arsenal. Doing this shenanigan over and over ensures that their foe will take advantage of this crutch of a habit. Players are intelligent. So are their foes.

 

[NotAYakk]

I dispute that it doubles the warlock's performance. If you use hex then you probably use an enhanced agonizing blast. That's your bread and butter. The spell slots are nice, but almost an afterthought in many cases.

So, I covered it was doubling one part of their performance, and gave an example where it was one part (a football players ability to jump) that wasn't even core. I thought it was extremely generous, but apparently not.

Or, similar, avoid 1 quarterback sack. Not the only thing a quarterback does.

THEN I went and talked about the alternative; you get a free Hex and cast 2 spells anyhow. So you go from 1d10+3-5 to 1d10+1d6+3-5. Here I talked about how fast the ball the quarterback throws.

EB is good, but a top-level spell slot is a better action in most situations, if you have it to spare. I mean, an extra fireball? A synaptic static? A dimension door? Those can completely change fights.

You have a constrained resource -- 2 spell before a rest. And a simple 1 hour ritual at the start of a day gives you 1 extra one. It is a no-brainer for anyone who gives a naughty word about their performance.

As a character, you don't know that the DM will spoon feed you an easy encounter or not. Is the situation lethal or trivial? Does it matter?

I get that over a full day it doesn't double performance. But it double one part of a Warlock's performance before the first short break of the day.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I will admit that all my thinking on this has been in the context of doing it before venturing into a dangerous ruin. If your main issue is the idea of a warlock going to this trouble every day, regardless of circumstance, then I understand. But does that mean you're comfortable with a warlock carrying a crate of chickens to the dungeon that he expects to spend a week exploring, and then using the chickens there? I did not get the impression that you would be.

That would still be a bit silly, but definitely an improvement. I mean, how would that work? Is the warlock hiring NPCs to keep the chickens safe from predators while the party is exploring the dungeon? Taking them into the dungeon would be a bad idea, but you can't just leave them penned in the woods...

 

[MGibster]

The Hex spell says you can target creatures with it. Are chickens creatures? Can you find statistics for them in the Monster Manual, the PHB, or anything published for 5th edition? If not, well, it looks like they're not really creatures. Of course that's silly. But if we're going to interpret the rules as being the universe, well, okay. Find me the statistics for chickens.

Oh, man. Someone's going to find stats for a chicken and then I'm really going to have egg on my face.

What we have her are fundamentally different ideas of how the game should be played. I have my own preference but I'm not going to tell anyone it's better than another. What I don't get is how anyone could read through this thread and say, "I just don't get your point of view." Both sides have given good reasons for their preferences so there shouldn't be any confusion. At some point you just have to accept that we don't all do things the same way.

Man, if a player told me his fighter was going to jump off a cliff I'd give him a warning that this would kill him. I don't care if the rules say the fall will only do 15d6 and I can't possibly roll high enough to kill the character. I will flat out kill the character should he choose to jump. But, like I said, I'd warn the player first.

 

[Fanaelialae]

So, I covered it was doubling one part of their performance, and gave an example where it was one part (a football players ability to jump) that wasn't even core. I thought it was extremely generous, but apparently not.

Or, similar, avoid 1 quarterback sack. Not the only thing a quarterback does.

THEN I went and talked about the alternative; you get a free Hex and cast 2 spells anyhow. So you go from 1d10+3-5 to 1d10+1d6+3-5. Here I talked about how fast the ball the quarterback throws.

EB is good, but a top-level spell slot is a better action in most situations, if you have it to spare. I mean, an extra fireball? A synaptic static? A dimension door? Those can completely change fights.

You have a constrained resource -- 2 spell before a rest. And a simple 1 hour ritual at the start of a day gives you 1 extra one. It is a no-brainer for anyone who gives a naughty word about their performance.

As a character, you don't know that the DM will spoon feed you an easy encounter or not. Is the situation lethal or trivial? Does it matter?

I get that over a full day it doesn't double performance. But it double one part of a Warlock's performance before the first short break of the day.

Let's just assume I accept all of that. So you spam your fireballs but you get hit and lose hex. Are you now going to rest for 2 hours (two short rests) and sacrifice another chicken because it's such a huge advantage?

 

[NotAYakk]

Let's just assume I accept all of that. So you spam your fireballs but you get hit and lose hex. Are you now going to rest for 2 hours (two short rests) and sacrifice another chicken because it's such a huge advantage?

It depends; is it a seriously dangerous/important situation? Do you have an hour to spare?

If it is dangerous/important, and you have the hour to spare, I'd think any professional would in the real world. It would be akin to keeping your armor maintained.